Where the Christian Right Is Strong

By NATE COHN

July 2, 2014

The religious right remains one of the most potent forces in American politics, but Northeasterners could be forgiven for forgetting. Evangelical Christians and Mormons, the two religious groups who most consistently espouse conservative political and cultural views, are basically absent in the Northeastern corridor.

The map shows the number of regular Evangelical Christian or Mormon congregation members, as reported by religious bodies. The data, therefore, does not include every Mormon or Evangelical Christian in the country. Black Protestant denominations are a separate category from other Evangelical Protestant denominations in this data set, and are not represented on this map.

The map does not neatly represent the religious right, either. There are many religious and cultural conservatives who do not regularly attend church, perhaps especially in West Virginia, where reported attendance is unusually low.

There are also many deeply religious and conservative Catholics, non-Evangelical Protestants and Jews. The High Plains and West Virginia, for instance, have large numbers of Lutherans and Methodists who are undoubtedly conservative, but not Evangelical, Christians. And on the other hand, not every Evangelical Christian or Mormon is a political or cultural conservative.

Yet there is not much doubt that Evangelical Protestants and Mormons are at the core of the religious right, and they’re overwhelmingly concentrated in the South and interior West.

The pull of Evangelical Protestants and Mormons is weaker elsewhere, including in New England and the rest of the Northeast.

It is also weaker in the Driftless Area of eastern Iowa and western Wisconsin, which holds the key to the Democratic advantage in presidential elections. When Democrats win these two states, as they usually do, it is with the help of margins from these voters. Without these states’ combined 16 electoral votes, the Democratic pathway to 270 electoral votes would require victory in Florida, or the combination of Ohio and either Virginia or Colorado.

Correction: September 12, 2014

An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect credit for a map that ran with the article. The source of the data was the U.S. Religion Census, conducted by the ASARB, not the Association of Religious Data Archives.

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